Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts
from the war-is-not-a-game dept
We should all know by now that this iteration of the Trump administration absolutely loves using pop culture imagery, including that of video games, to help message its horrible policies. Want to gloat about ICE terrorizing American cities and generally pissing everyone off when they’re not too busy perforating innocents? Let’s use images from Pokémon and Halo! Want to celebrate the destruction of American health thanks to RFK Jr. being in charge of it? Time to whip together a Stardew Valley meme!
It’s gross, of course. Wrapping these pop culture images around fascism, particularly where real deaths have been a result, is nauseating.
But if you want to make this absolutely as disgusting as possible, you need only to use video game footage to gloat about the body count America is racking up in its war/non-war with Iran.
On March 4, the official White House Twitter account posted a roughly one-minute-long video featuring numerous clips of real military strikes against different Iranian locations and targets. At the very start of the video is a clip from 2023’s Modern Warfare III that shows a player activating an MGB killstreak. This is a hidden killstreak for players who get 30 kills without dying. Once called, the bomb ends the match. The official video was posted with the caption: “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue.”
This is disgusting. Using video game footage to gloat about the Iranian body count is simply sick. Set aside what you think about this war. Set aside whether you think this administration has any fucking clue what it is doing and what will come next once it’s done dropping its bombs. Set aside the open question of what our goals actually are here, whether we’re going to see American troops on the ground in Iran, or whether this will end up as another American quagmire in the Middle East. None of that is the point here.
This isn’t a fucking game. It’s war, no matter how hard the president and the Republicans in Congress want to pretend otherwise so that they don’t have to do their damned jobs. War is a very serious matter, a sentence that never should need to be written in the first place. Eschewing that level of seriousness by treating this like it’s some kind of a video game and we’re all just trying to earn trophies and badges for our kill counts is fucking sick.
Particularly when you consider that this gloating includes over 1200 Iranian deaths, including 175 schoolgirls that committed the crime of trying to learn.
IRAN: At least 1,230 people killed, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed in a missile strike on a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the war’s first day, according to the non-profit humanitarian group Iranian Red Crescent Society. It was unclear if the overall death toll included Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military casualties.
Here’s an image of the mass graves Iran says it dug in order to put all of those children to their final rest.
I wonder, are those girls included in the body count to get the White House its Xbox achievement?
War is not a game. Treating it like a video game shows that these are deeply unserious people that are not only running our government, but currently prosecuting a war that they don’t want to call a war. The naked cruelty of it all, rather than treating the enemy and, more importantly, the American people with respect, is horrifying.
That they’re doing it in our name, all the more so.
Filed Under: donald trump, iran, modern warfare, social media, trump administration, video games
Comments on “Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts”
At the start of the Afghanistan war a jdam hit a school and Bush apologized for it so it sometimes happens. However, Iran is a terrorist state and will kill their own to keep them in line and generate propaganda, for home and abroad. I will be skeptical about the claim they didn’t do it themselves until someone admits it actually came from us.
As for the video, Trump being tacky in war also…. if the republicans didn’t nominate him we wouldn’t have had to find out.
Re:
The elasticity of your moral relativism can pretzel twist more than a contortionist with extreme Ehlers-Danlos. Do you prefer Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man or Elastigirl?
Re:
The possibility that Iran attacked its own people isn’t a complete absurdity. But given how the school was bombed in the same timeframe as other places in Iran being bombed by Israel and the United States? The idea that Iran blew up several dozen of its own citizens to pin a war crime on two countries that have a history of not giving a shit about the lives of Muslims in the Middle East sounds more than a little absurd. Skepticism is healthy; conspiracy fantasizing is not.
Re: You are evil
How do you live with yourself, being a monster?
Re:
Go ask Renee Good and Alex Pretti about “killing their own”.
Oh right, you just label them “domestic terrorist”. and everything’s fine. “Terrorist” is such a useful word. Drop it in, and no further arguments are required.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
I hope one day the US gets attacked, and you kill yourself after you find your daughters shredded body.
You are a vile, evil person and deserve to be wiped off the face of this planet.
Re: Re:
Found the right-wing provocateur, guys!
Re: Re: Re:
“So much for the peaceful blue-haired gay transgender militant lesbian muslim atheist liberal leftist communist anarchist cosplayer!”
Re: Did you know
That Israel,
Is such a closed society, and very Orthodox. that its leaders dont listen to its own people. And they Persecute Their Own Citizens.
And we have many pictures of it over many many years??
Do you Understand WHY Most Jewish persons DO NOT want to live there?
I bet you dont understand HOW that Land area is setup either.
If a group gets upset, all they need do, is WALK out of the country. There are Lines for the Borders ONLY on maps. If you are willing to rough it, you can Cross anywhere over a 5,000 mile Border, into an area WE arnt watching. So get a hint.
We are back to 2011. And your kids being Frisked While in Public.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if our Orange Felon and his rabid comrades decide to commit a 9/11 in Tehran, or even cheer the actual 9/11 as a glorious moment, saying a 9/11 should happen to Iran.
CoD has always been one flavor or another of American Military Propaganda and War Justification over the years. It’s no real surprise to see this.
I honestly think that we took the pushback against violent videogames too far and should have allowed for more critical analysis, especially as games increased in fidelity & ability to portray realistic things (depending on the art direction) and their cultural impact.
Like, just last year, it was rumored that GTA6 was going to feature Pride Parades that you could encounter. The rumor is still, from what I’ve seen, unconfirmed, but I think it should give people pause. Have we left enough room at the table for people to go:
without being seen as moral busybodies?
Re:
Agh, what I meant when I said “we took the pushback against violent videogames too far” was that maybe we pushed back too hard against the people who were up in arms about violent videogames. It makes me worried that we left too little room for reasonable people to go “Hey, this seems like too much?”
It’s going to be bad if GTA6 does have Pride Parades, people record footage of their charaters going on virtual rampage of them, editing it, and spamming it to TikTok and other social media, and the prevailing response to people unsettled by it is “It’s just a game, grow some thicker skin” alongside comparing those with concerns to Jack Thompson.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
You are all evil.
I’ve come to the realisation that US Americans are not human beings. You are base monstrous creatures. Completely, utterly, irredeemably evil. No human would ever commit such monstrous acts, you people can not possibly be human. You make me sick to my stomach. I hate you with every fibre of my being. You are the worst people to ever exist. Shame on you.
Re:
Well that’s a totally rational response to a post literally condemning the actions in question.
Re: Re:
I wonder how they feel about Tiananmen Square.
Re: Re: Re: Oh I can guess...
‘Never heard of it.’
Re: Re: Re:
Careful, their internet connection will mysteriously drop out when they reload the page now!
Re:
Now, you sound exactly like MAGA talking about liberals, or Nazis talking about Jews, or anyone of dozens, hundreds, thousands of instances of one group whining about another perceived group because one or a few members of that group personally hurt them somehow (made up or not). That’s what’s known colloquially as being a “psycho.” (And just to be real, the vast majority of “US Americans” (did you mean “us” or “U.S.”) are totally against this attack on Iran, for all kinds of reasons, but especially for tragedies like this happening. The White House, however, is full of psychos.)
Re:
The CCP is illegitimate.
Re:
Even though a majority of Americans OPPOSE this? That they said we shouldn’t have attacked a country that did nothing to attack us and wasn’t even a real threat?
Typo in the numbers
12,000 vs 1,200 above the text above the mass graves image
Re: Blech, yup
Indeed a typo and this will be fixed. My apologies for the error.
Re: Re: You know
Space balls 2 is Coming?
It is looks like the attack on the school was deliberate.
The compound they hit was initially completely IRGC but over the years parts were split from it for public uses. The IRGC still had about a 1/3 of the location on the other side of the compound in use for military purposes. Israel or US hit that side and the school with precision munitions leaving the rest of the area untouched.
Similar attacks on schools, clinics/hospitals and police stations are being reported all over the area of Iran that stand off munitions can reach.
This kind of attack is SOP for Israel, break the population, get the other side to back down by killing the civilians the other side is supposed to protect, hope that the civilians will revolt.
With regards to the video game footage. Iran specifically designed their transport erector launchers (TEL) to look like normal cargo trucks.
Combine this with, currently, a lead time between detection and interception of 30+ minutes, and that is if a drone is observing the area, while it takes 15 to 20 minutes launch then leave and the number of hits after the first two days of the war on TELs has dropped drastically.
Similarly the Iranian air force is a joke due to sanctions. Heck they tried to intercept a F-35 with a Yak-130 which is normally an unarmed training aircraft. So video of planes being blown up is video of “we need to waste ammunition, time, etc. just to make sure that what is most likely a decoy is gone just in case it isn’t but one of the few aircraft capable to take to the air for combat missions”.
Re: I like it
Its Called Justification, and rationalization.
And if we Bomb Israel, we could Solve 2 of THEIR wars in 1 hit and be finished?
CORRECT?
And Trump could have More room for his Hotels? Off the beach.
Sinking an unarmed ship.
It looks like they included the sinking of an unarmed ship in international waters as part of their ‘victory dance’.
It’s depraved.
Re:
The ship was a frigate from the Iranian navy. Where are you seeing that it was unarmed?
Re: Re:
From what info we were given by the Indian navy, the Iranians had been invited to a military exercise where all vessels were without any ammunition, therefore being unarmed.
Re: Re: Re: Don't be so sure
That doesn’t appear to be entirely accurate. Iran claimed the ship was unarmed. But part of the parade involved the ships, including the Iranian ship, firing live rounds of the surface guns and the anti-aircraft guns.
Unless they were truly firing blanks, which is not what the Indian government indicated, they were armed.
Re: Re: Re:
Again, based on what source? None of the outlets I can find reporting on this make any mention of the Indian navy claiming that the frigate was unarmed.
And given that it had just come back from participating in a large naval training exercise, it also seems weird that it would be completely unarmed.
Re: Re: Re:2
Apparently, it was from the former Indian Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal.
Re: Re: Re:3
Do you have a link?
Even in an opinion piece by Sibal published today, he doesn’t make any mention of the frigate being unarmed.
Re: Re: Re:4
I’ll see if I can find a link. I came across it in my Facebook feed initially, but I’ll see if there’s more out there about it.
Re: Re: Re:
Doesn’t really matter if the ship was unarmed or not.
The question is: “Is the U.S. at war with Iran?”, seeing that under certain circumstances even unarmed merchant ships flying an enemy flag can be legally targetted let alone warships.
The problem is that the US is de jure not at war with Iran, de facto they are. And that is going to be a mess for people better educated in this then me to discuss.
Similarly the not rescuing of survivors is not as clear cut as a war crime since the relevant treaty makes it conditional on capability (subs don’t have a lot of room and/or life rafts) and enemy threats in the area (2nd Iranian ships now alerted to an enemy sub).
That said this was stupid. They could have tailed the ship back to Iran and torpedoed it close to the war zone. Doing it here the US has annoyed (or worse) India by using their exercise to target Iran. What is also illuminating is to see general public opinion of the US going after the ship, which would be a reflection of the opinion of the US going after Irian, with even a news paper like the Guardian getting an expert on record stating this is illegal.
Re: Re:
The US has supposedly sunk over 30 Iranian ships including the command ship that was coordinating the houthis attempts to close the suez canal for the last several years. I don’t know if one of them was unarmed but resupply ships are sometimes unarmed or lightly armed.
They know their audience
They know that to MAGAts The Other(read: Anyone non-MAGAt) aren’t actually people why not treat it as a game where a death-toll is celebrated no differently than a high score in a game?
They laughed and cheered when they saw the US gestapo brutalizing and murdering people in america, why would anyone expect them to show more empathy for those in other countries?